Founded in 1993 by brothers Tom and David Gardner, The Motley Fool helps millions of people attain financial freedom through our website, podcasts, books, newspaper column, radio show, and premium investing services.

YouTube's Thai Ball Game

Google's video-sharing site is bumping up against Thailand's censorship concerns.

The Bangkok brouhaha isn't going away. Thailand's decision to ban Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube site -- after objecting to uploads that were critical of King Bhumibol Adulyadej -- is a thorny issue, highlighting the complexities of running a global website.

Thailand isn't the first country to block its citizenry's access to YouTube. A court-ordered outage was issued in Brazil back in January, after racy videos of Daniela Cicarelli frolicking on a barren Spanish beach with her boyfriend made it onto the site.

That was an easy decision for YouTube to make, as the sexual escapades ran afoul of YouTube's decency standards. Folks kept uploading the same ribald clip, and that's when Brazil reacted and exposed the fallacy in YouTube's screening policy of letting viewers alert the site when unauthorized videos appear.

The Thailand situation doesn't have a quick fix. YouTube encourages open political discussions, and the text comments left by viewers after watching the politically charged videos often prove to be more incendiary than the actual clips.

As long as the uploads color within the lines of YouTube's somewhat wide standards, taking down the offensive videos will open the site to harsher criticism. In fact, some of the more damaging clips on the site right now have come as a response to Thailand's initial site blockage.

Running a global company sometimes means having to make concessions along the way. Web search giants like Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Baidu.com (NASDAQ:BIDU) wouldn't be accessible in China if their search results weren't tight-lipped about what happened in Tiananmen Square. Google took some heat for bowing to China's censorship demands, but it was the only way into the world's most populous market.

The solution may be to allow countries the ability to block offensive videos at the country level, but that may be more trouble than it's worth. Is it true that the World Wide Web won't work as a "one size fits all" solution?

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has been to Thailand. He enjoyed his visit and has no beef with the Thai government. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

Author

Rick has been writing for Motley Fool since 1995 where he's a Consumer and Tech Stocks Specialist. Yes, that's a long time with more than 20,000 bylines over those 22 years. He's been an analyst for Motley Fool Rule Breakers and a portfolio lead analyst for Motley Fool Supernova since each newsletter service's inception. He earned his BBA and MBA from the University of Miami, and he splits his time living in Miami, Florida and Celebration, Florida.
Follow @market